ok, took some reading and testing, but it can be done - it just isn't as obvious as I expected.
back in C2 I used to manually add or subtract a days worth of milliseconds (24x60x60x1000)
but with the C3 Date plugin you can use the .ChangeDate (or .ChangeSeconds, etc...)
the part that confused me for a bit was that you can't just say -3 for 3 days ago.
(Today = Date.Now in following examples)
if you say PastDate = Date.ChangeDate(Today, 0) the 0 means the last day of the previous month. So -3 means three days prior to the last day of last month, not three days ago from today.
so, to get "3 days ago" you have to say PastDate = Date.ChangeDate(Today, Date.GetDate(Today) -3)
or for two weeks from now you say NewDate = Date.ChangeDate(Today, Date.GetDate(Today) +14)